Strong TV interest

Early morning. I am on the my way back from Barcelona to Madrid on the high speed train, still buzzing from the achievements of the past few days. I participated in a professional event called DocsBarcelona. It’s a meeting between producers with projects and broadcasters. My film was chosen with 23 other international projects to be pitched to some 15 commissiong editors: those who do the pre-buying of documentary projects for their station and country. Mine was one of the last projects to be presented (number 21) and it was my turn around 1AM on the second day, Friday. You get 7 minutes to do your pitch, which should include up to 3 minutes of video, and then there are 7 minutes for some discussion with the broadcasters around the table under the supervision of a moderator. All of this with an audience of a few hundred people. Then, in the afternoon, there are one-to-one meetings with the commissioning editors to get down to the crunch and see if there is real interest.

The project was received so well!! It was truly amazing. They loved the trailer, my presentation made sense and, so I hear, I sounded confident and calm (it’s that duck metaphor I guess – calm on the surface). What’s more, various people who were in the audience later told me it was one of the best pitches of all of them… which might be irrelevant, but nevertheless very nice to hear. To top it all of, we received a commitment from YLE (Finnish public broadcaster) to pre-buy (and hence co-finance) the film. And several other very strong leads and ideas, including mention of some of the slots most in demand (no names mentioned here – I am superstitious about that).

So, I’m in love with life right now. It all starts to make more sense. And at the same time, always thinking of the other side of things, I feel more pressure to live up to these expectations and really make a film worthy of so much attention. I kept on reminding myself: it’s not made yet. It’s just a pitch. You might like the pitch, but the film is a whole other story. Which brings me back to Sujeylin. In a way, I feel more and more dependent on her. Our relationship is shaping up. She feels she needs me, I know that. But I also need her (something she might figure out at some point). For reasons completely different than hers, and probably much less important in the grand scheme of things. Fingers crossed we can pull this weight together and really make it happen, as it will improve both our lives no doubt.